Why Mediocre Songs Once Ruled the Radio

In the 1990s I spent a lot of time around the Nashville music scene as an aspiring songwriter, chasing a question that wouldn't leave me alone:

Why do so many of the best songs, written by the most talented people, never make it out of the small clubs and onto the radio?

On any random Tuesday you could walk into a bar and hear original songs written by baristas or insurance agents that blew your mind, but very few of them would ever be recorded, let alone heard by the masses.

I finally asked someone who worked the business side of the industry, and his answer influenced how I think about the connection between ambition and leadership to this day.

You would think the goal of releasing music to the radio in the 1990's was to sell records, but it wasn't. Not really.

It was to sell ads.

You see, to become "known", you had to get played on the radio. Radio stations made money selling ads, and ads sell better when listeners stick around longer. So music labels tested songs on real people over the phone, asking them to rate each one from one to five: how likely are you to keep listening if this comes on?

The "ones" flopped immediately, obviously. But strangely, so did the "fives". The songs people loved most were also the most polarizing. Whatever made a song someone's favorite made it someone else's least favorite. So the songs that won, consistently, were the "threes".

They were just good enough to hold attention, but not distinctive enough to risk losing anyone.

An entire industry quietly organized itself around chasing the "three". Not necessarily the best song, but the song most likely to keep you around just long enough to sell the next ad.

If you'd asked any music artist in the 1990's what they were trying to do, they'd have given you something noble like "I want to make great music - art that defines a generation."

But what they actually wanted was different. To be discovered. To be known. To matter. So, the net result was engineering music that accomplished the underlying intent, not the stated purpose.

Here's why that story has stuck with me for thirty years:

As leaders, what we say we want, what we actually want, and what we actually do are often very different things.

You can feel this gap even when you can't name it. When a leader presents one thing while intending another, the people around them sense the instability - the dissonance - and it costs them the trust they need to lead well.

So here's something worth sitting with this week: Where are you saying one thing (because it's the "right" thing to say), but secretly wanting and acting on something else entirely?

Nobody sets out to build a career, a team, or a piece of work aimed at the "three", but it happens anyway, one dissonant decision at a time.

We need to do the harder work of closing the gap between what we say, what we want, and what we're actually building toward.

If you'd like, hit reply and tell me where you're noticing that gap.

And if you'd rather listen than read, I go deeper on this in this week's episode of Daily Creative.

Have a great weekend!